NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Google+, Privacy, and Balancing Identity
Google+, Privacy, and Balancing Identity
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000882.html
A few days ago in "Google+'s 'Identity' Controversy: No Easy Answers"
( http://j.mp/ny8XFd [Lauren's Blog] ), I briefly discussed why
identity issues -- especially related to Google's excellent new
Google+ product, but by no means restricted to Google -- are so
complex. I also explained various aspects of Google's policies
regarding identity issues associated with Google+ and Google Profiles
as I understand them, based on my recent conversation with Google
representatives on this topic.
Reaction to my posting could best be described as "comprehensive."
There are lots of strong feelings about identity, anonymity,
pseudonymity, and associated issues, and there are many hopes and
concerns regarding Google's getting these "right" for the presumably
very long-term Google+ project.
There are a variety of reasons to encourage the use of "true names"
(or at least "commonly known by names") in social media such as
Google+, Facebook, and others.
One advantage of this approach is that it tends to foster polite
discourse, since we're more likely to view other participants as
actual human beings, not simply as nebulous icon-based artificial
"life forms" of one sort or another. All else being equal, this is a
highly desirable attribute for a social networking environment.
However, there are other aspects to use of true or real names, which
do not necessarily have only positive characteristics.
Businesses might be interested in knowing what their employees are
saying publicly about them -- or about other firms, and may be wary of
potential or current employees engaging in "unusual" lifestyles.
Insurance companies may find monitoring their policy holders' social
postings about personal and health issues -- or "risky" behaviors --
to be advantageous to the companies' underwriting procedures.
Authorities can use social media postings to build dossiers (legally
or not) on individuals, with or without court orders.
Politically repressive governments can use identity information to
find and target dissidents.
Estranged partners may seek to locate their ex-mates for various
negative purposes.
And so on.
Fundamentally, many of these identity issues revolve around personal
choice and "need to know" parameters.
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg was dead wrong when he suggested that
having "multiple identities" (on the Net) showed a lack of integrity.
In fact, separation of the personal, public, office, home, and other
other aspects of our lives is entirely normal, and most of us would
not routinely expect to share details broadly between these
categories. This is especially true as we get older, and accumulate
more "life baggage" as we go along.
Already in the almost three weeks that I've been using Google+, I've
had the experience several times of refraining from commenting on
threads where I could have imparted potentially useful information,
because I did not feel comfortable drawing attention to myself
publicly relative to the topics under discussion. Perhaps 99% of the
time I have no problem with being fully identified in my public
postings. But that remaining 1% is still a significant concern
nonetheless.
This sort of self-censorship regarding legitimate matters, where no
fraud or other bad intent is involved, should be a red flag regarding
the possibly stultifying effect that "true identity" can bring to some
situations.
There are all sorts of identity-related issues to be dealt with on
large-scale social media platforms.
Special systems may be employed to handle "celebrity" signups, but
often even those names are not globally unique, and it is not
necessarily reasonable for celebrities to have priority over anyone
else with the same names.
Calls for government-linked ID systems such as NSTIC would go much
farther toward verifying identities, but the supposedly "voluntary"
nature of these systems would rapidly become de facto required at many
major sites, and a host of free speech and other concerns related to
government involvement with Internet IDs has made NSTIC and similar
proposals understandably highly controversial.
Are there perhaps better balanced ways to approach these issues on
social media?
First, we should keep in mind that even when persons claim to use
their real or common names on these systems, we don't normally have
any way to routinely authenticate or verify those names, and as I
noted just above, government involvement in this process could be
quite problematic in key respects.
In fact, we know that many completely honest persons concerned about
revealing their true identities online frequently simply create
accounts and profiles under assumed names that appear real, as
pseudonyms for postings that won't be used in any unlawful manner,
only as a mechanism to keep discussions regarding personal issues from
becoming publicly linked to their true identities.
Ironically, the creation of an environment where users may feel pushed
to creating seemingly legitimate false identities, to avoid using
obviously "unreal" pseudonyms by which they may be more commonly known
online -- but that are much more likely to be deleted in profile
purges -- would seem to be a decidedly suboptimal situation both for
the firms providing the services and for their users.
We really do need to move beyond the false arguments that any use of
anonymity indicates criminal or antisocial behaviors, and acknowledge
that there are a range of situations where anonymity or the use of
arbitrary pseudonyms should not only be permitted on social media
networks, but in fact are fundamental aspects of basic free speech
rights, recognized as legitimate back to the founding of this country
and beyond.
So the question becomes, how can we encourage the use of real or
common names in systems like Google+ and other social media -- for the
real benefits that such usage brings -- but still foster a balance
that permits other, less tightly identified forms of participation in
legitimate ways for honest users who feel a need for such options.
There are various possible approaches, but very briefly, one useful
avenue for exploration might be permitting the use of anonymous or
arbitrary pseudonyms (that are reasonable and not abusive) either
posting-by-posting or "full time," so long as the users involved have
provided their real name information on their profiles on a "not for
public display" basis.
This would potentially help to at least somewhat allay concerns
regarding potential abusive use cases. It could be argued that users
likely to abuse are also likely to provide false data even for this
"private" identity field -- and this is true. But such users are
currently likely to post under potentially even more disruptive fake
identities that appear real and are not easily identified as
pseudonyms in the first place.
On the other hand, I believe that there is a far larger community of
honest and polite users who would prefer to use pseudonyms on
postings, who will be unable to make full use (or perhaps any use) of
social media where pseudonyms are not permitted, and who would be
willing to provide their real name information as a private profile
field in exchange for pseudonymous posting capabilities.
This is just a thumbnail description of course. Actually designing
and deploying a system to permit and encourage an appropriate balance
between full identification and total anonymity is a decidedly
difficult task. But if we genuinely care about free speech, we must
not permit fears of potential abuse to prohibit the use of anonymity
and pseudonymity in furtherance of solving legitimate individual
privacy concerns.
As I noted earlier, these concepts are by no means restricted to the
world of Google+. They should also apply to Facebook and virtually
all other general usage social media platforms.
However, Google+ is newly born, with various features in flux and
rapidly evolving. I firmly believe that the people of Google very
much want to get these issues right in ways that will encourage
optimum usefulness (and fun!) from the environment for the most people
possible.
If any firm can find the path to "balancing identity" as I've
described, I'm convinced that Google can do so with Google+.
If nothing else, it deserves the old college try -- both for the sake
of Google, and for the Internet and global community at large.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://vortex.com/g+lauren
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com